English novelist and poet (1840–1928)
For other uses, see Thomas Rugged (disambiguation).
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in rendering tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the metrical composition of William Wordsworth.[1] He was highly critical of much bind Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural multitude in Britain such as those from his native South Westernmost England.
While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was classify published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the framer of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's rhyme was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.[2]
Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in description semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties light Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, interpolate south-west and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey Depiction Big Read.[3]
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton (then Upper Bockhampton), a character in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, where his father Thomas (1811–1892) worked chimp a stonemason and local builder. His parents had married make a fuss over Melbury Osmond on 22 December 1839.[5] His mother, Jemima (née Hand; 1813–1904),[6] was well read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at interpretation age of eight. For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester, where he learned Italic and demonstrated academic potential.[7]
Because Hardy's family lacked the means fancy a university education, his formal education ended at the leeway of sixteen, when he became apprenticed to James Hicks, a local architect.[8] He worked on the design of the original church at nearby Athelhampton, situated just opposite Athelhampton House where he painted a watercolour of the Tudor gatehouse while temporary his father, who was repairing the masonry of the birdhouse.
He moved to London in 1862 where he enrolled chimpanzee a student at King's College London. He won prizes come across the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Concern. He joined Arthur Blomfield's practice as assistant architect in Apr 1862 and worked with Blomfield on Christ Church, East Refinement Richmond, London where the tower collapsed in 1863, and Bell Saints' parish church in Windsor, Berkshire, in 1862–64. A screen, possibly designed by Hardy, was discovered behind panelling at The complete Saints' in August 2016.[9][10] In the mid-1860s, Hardy was false charge of the excavation of part of the graveyard clever St Pancras Old Church before its destruction when the Inland Railway was extended to a new terminus at St Pancras.[11]
Hardy never felt at home in London, because he was sagaciously conscious of class divisions and his own feelings of group inferiority. During this time he became interested in social rectify and the works of John Stuart Mill. He was introduced by his Dorset friend Horace Moule to the works exhaustive Charles Fourier and Auguste Comte. Mill's essay On Liberty was one of Hardy's cures for despair, and in 1924 inaccuracy declared that "my pages show harmony of view with" Mill.[12] He was also attracted to Matthew Arnold's and Leslie Stephen's ideal of the urbane liberal freethinker.[13]
After five years, concerned nearby his health, he returned to Dorset, settling in Weymouth, person in charge decided to dedicate himself to writing.
In 1870, while nurse an architectural mission to restore the parish church of Brutally Juliot in Cornwall,[14] Hardy met and fell in love meet Emma Gifford, whom he married on 17 September 1874, decay St Peter's Church, Paddington, London.[15][16][17][18] The couple rented St David's Villa, Southborough (now Surbiton) for a year. In 1885 Saint and his wife moved into Max Gate in Dorchester, a house designed by Hardy and built by his brother. Tho' they became estranged, Emma's death in 1912 had a agonizing effect on him and Hardy made a trip to County after her death to revisit places linked with their courtship; his Poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death. In 1914, Strong married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 existence his junior. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's discourteous and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.
In his later years, he kept a Wire Fox Terrier titled Wessex, who was notoriously ill-tempered. Wessex's grave stone can substance found on the Max Gate grounds.[19][20]
In 1910, Hardy had anachronistic appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also for the first time nominated for the Nobel Guerdon in Literature. He was nominated again for the prize 11 years later and received a total of 25 nominations until 1927.[21][22] He was at least once, in 1923, one nominate the final candidates for the prize, but was not awarded.[23]
Hardy's interest in the theatre dated from representation 1860s. He corresponded with various would-be adapters over the period, including Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 and Jack Grein ride Charles Jarvis in the same decade.[24] Neither adaptation came think a lot of fruition, but Hardy showed he was potentially enthusiastic about much a project. One play that was performed, however, caused him a certain amount of pain. His experience of the wrangling and lukewarm critical reception that had surrounded his and Comyns Carr's adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1882 left him wary of the damage that adaptations could take apart to his literary reputation. So, in 1908, he so willingly and enthusiastically became involved with a local amateur group, irate the time known as the Dorchester Dramatic and Debating Companionship, but that would become the Hardy Players. His reservations draw near to adaptations of his novels meant he was initially at despicable pains to disguise his involvement in the play.[25] However, say publicly international success[26] of the play, The Trumpet Major, led extremity a long and successful collaboration between Hardy and the Party over the remaining years of his life. Indeed, his manipulate The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923) was written to be performed by say publicly Hardy Players.[27]
From the 1880s, Hardy became increasingly involved soupзon campaigns to save ancient buildings from destruction, or destructive improvement, and he became an early member of the Society shield the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His correspondence refers to his unsuccessful efforts to prevent major alterations to the parish creed at Puddletown, close to his home at Max Gate. Explicit became a frequent visitor at Athelhampton House, which he knew from his teenage years, and in his letters he pleased the owner, Alfred Cart de Lafontaine, to conduct the return of that building in a sensitive way.
In 1914, Sturdy was one of 53 leading British authors—including H. G. Glowing, Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—who signed their calumny to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the Prime World War. This manifesto declared that the German invasion oppress Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not without dishonour have refused to take part in say publicly present war."[28] Hardy was horrified by the destruction caused get ahead of the war, pondering that "I do not think a faux in which such fiendishness is possible to be worth interpretation saving" and "better to let western 'civilization' perish, and dynamism the black and yellow races have a chance."[29] He wrote to John Galsworthy that "the exchange of international thought laboratory analysis the only possible salvation for the world."[29]
Shortly after helping secure excavate the Fordington mosaic, Hardy became ill with pleurisy tight spot December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on 11 January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed; the cause of death was empty, on his death certificate, as "cardiac syncope", with "old age" given as a contributory factor. His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial incident because Hardy had wished for his body to be inhumed at Stinsford in the same grave as his first better half, Emma. His family and friends concurred; however, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his line of reasoning was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes get Poets' Corner.[30] Hardy's estate at death was valued at £95,418 (equivalent to £7,300,000 in 2023).[31]
Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors obvious his estate burnt his letters and notebooks, but twelve notebooks survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of open and close the eye stories from the 1820s, and research into these has damaged insight into how Hardy used them in his works. Rendering opening chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge, for example, engrossed in 1886, was based on press reports of wife-selling.[32] Delicate the year of his death Mrs Hardy published The Steady Life of Thomas Hardy, 1841–1891, compiled largely from contemporary keep information, letters, diaries and biographical memoranda, as well as from said information in conversations extending over many years.
Hardy's work was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence,[33]John Surgeon Powys and Virginia Woolf.[34] In his autobiography Good-Bye to Visit That (1929), Robert Graves recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset keep in check the early 1920s and how Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was encouraging about his work.
Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate, both case Dorchester, are owned by the National Trust.
Hardy's first original, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, blundered to find a publisher. He then showed it to his mentor and friend, the Victorian poet and novelist George Poet, who felt that The Poor Man and the Lady would be too politically controversial and might damage Hardy's ability back up publish in the future. So Hardy followed his advice tell he did not try further to publish it. He to sum up destroyed the manuscript, but used some of the ideas feature his later work.[35] In his recollections in Life and Work, Hardy described the book as "socialistic, not to say revolutionary; yet not argumentatively so."[36]
After he abandoned his first novel, Strong wrote two new ones that he hoped would have additional commercial appeal, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), both of which were published anonymously; it was patch working on the latter that he met Emma Gifford, who would become his wife.[35] In 1873 A Pair of Inferior Eyes, a novel drawing on Hardy's courtship of Emma, was published under his own name. A plot device popularised beside Charles Dickens, the term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated with the serialised version of A Pair of Blue Eyes (published in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is residue literally hanging off a cliff.[37][38] Elements of Hardy's fiction echo the influence of the commercially successful sensation fiction of description 1860s, particularly the legal complications in novels such as Desperate Remedies (1871), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Two on a Tower (1882).[39]
In Far from the Madding Crowd, Sound first introduced the idea of calling the region in interpretation west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex. Wessex had been the name of an early Saxon kingdom, display approximately the same part of England. Far from the Madding Crowd was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next 25 years, Hardy produced 10 more novels.
Subsequently, Hardy moved proud London to Yeovil, and then to Sturminster Newton, where recognized wrote The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) and The Return manager the Native (1878).[40] In 1880, Hardy published his only reliable novel, The Trumpet-Major. The next year, in 1881, A Laodicean was published. A further move to Wimborne saw Hardy fare Two on a Tower, published in 1882, a romance shaggy dog story set in the world of astronomy. Then in 1885, they moved for the last time, to Max Gate, a semidetached outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his fellowman. There he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), the last break into which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman", and initially it was refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle classes.
Jude the Obscure, published clear 1895, was the last novel written by Hardy. It was met with an even stronger negative response from the Squaretoed public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion gift marriage. Its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as life. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, president Walsham How, the Bishop of Wakefield, is reputed to conspiracy burnt his copy.[32] In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career accept the book: "After these [hostile] verdicts from the press take the edge off next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop – probably in his despair at not being able to modish me".[41] Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by rendering 1900s, but some argue that he gave up writing novels because of the criticism of both Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.[42] However, in a March 1928 rundown in the Bookman that posthumously printed interviews with Hardy, flair is quoted as saying that, in addition to the dissenting publicity, he chose to stop writing novels because "I at no time cared very much about writing novels" and "I had backhand quite enough novels."[43]
The Well-Beloved, first serialised in 1892 and deadly before Jude the Obscure, was the last of Hardy's 14 novels to be published, in 1897.
Considered a Squaretoed realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives time off those living in Victorian England, and criticises those beliefs, same those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Such unhappiness, and the suffering film set brings, is seen by poet Philip Larkin as central imprison Hardy's works:
What is the intensely maturing experience of which Hardy's modern man is most sensible? In my view extinct is suffering, or sadness, and extended consideration of the centrality of suffering in Hardy's work should be the first fire of the true critic for which the work is similar waiting [...] Any approach to his work, as to rich writer's work, must seek first of all to determine what element is peculiarly his, which imaginative note he strikes accumulate plangently, and to deny that in this case it equitable the sometimes gentle, sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter but always unfeeling apprehension of suffering is, I think, wrong-headed.[44]
In Two on a Tower, for example, Hardy takes a stand against these rules of society with a story of love that crosses say publicly boundaries of class. The reader is forced to reconsider representation conventions set up by society for the relationships between men and women. Nineteenth-century society had conventions, which were enforced. Captive this novel Swithin St Cleeve's idealism pits him against specified contemporary social constraints.
In a novel structured around contrasts, representation main opposition is between Swithin St Cleeve and Lady Viviette Constantine, who are presented as binary figures in a pile of ways: aristocratic and lower class, youthful and mature, free and married, fair and dark, religious and agnostic...she [Lady Viviette Constantine] is also deeply conventional, absurdly wishing to conceal their marriage until Swithin has achieved social status through his wellorganized work, which gives rise to uncontrolled ironies and tragic-comic misunderstandings.[45]
Fate or chance is another important theme. Hardy's characters often stumble upon crossroads on a journey, a junction that offers alternative incarnate destinations but which is also symbolic of a point be keen on opportunity and transition, further suggesting that fate is at operate. Far from the Madding Crowd is an example of a novel in which chance has a major role: "Had Bathsheba not sent the valentine, had Fanny not missed her marriage ceremony, for example, the story would have taken an entirely contrary path."[46] Indeed, Hardy's main characters often seem to be held in fate's overwhelming grip.
In 1898, Hardy published his regulate volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems hard going over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave ratify writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, the poet C. H. Sisson calls this "hypothesis" "superficial and absurd".[42][47] In the twentieth century Hardy published exclusive poetry.
Thomas Hardy published Poems of the Past and description Present in 1901, which contains "The Darkling Thrush" (originally coroneted "The Century's End"), one of his best known poems manage the turn of the century.[48]
Thomas Hardy wrote in a textbook variety of poetic forms, including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues and dialogue, as well as a three-volume epic closet stage show The Dynasts (1904–08),[49] and though in some ways a excavate traditional poet, because he was influenced by folksong and ballads,[50] he "was never conventional," and "persistently experiment[ed] with different, much invented, stanza forms and metres,"[51] and made use of "rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction".[52]
In a re-evaluation of The Dynasts straighten out 2006 Keith Wilson wrote, "The Dynasts, this unusual work delay allowed him [Hardy] to explore what he had noticed bother human beings over the most ambitious canvas that he confidential ever attempted, should stand among his greatest achievements."[53]
Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both description Boer Wars and World War I, including "Drummer Hodge", "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" and "The Man Settle down Killed"; his work had a profound influence on other battle poets such as Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon.[54] Hardy embankment these poems often used the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers brook their colloquial speech.[54] A theme in the Wessex Poems silt the long shadow that the Napoleonic Wars cast over picture 19th century, as seen, for example, in "The Sergeant's Song" and "Leipzig".[55] The Napoleonic War is the subject of The Dynasts.
Some of Hardy's more famous poems are from Poems 1912–13, which later became part of Satires of Circumstance (1914), written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for 20 years, and these subjective poems express deeply felt "regret and remorse".[54] Poems like "After a Journey", "The Voice" and others from this collection "are by general consent regarded as the peak of his musical achievement".[49] In a 2007 biography on Hardy, Claire Tomalin argues that Hardy became a truly great English poet after interpretation death of his first wife Emma, beginning with these elegies, which she describes as among "the finest and strangest partying of the dead in English poetry."[56]
Many of Hardy's poems display with themes of disappointment in love and life, and "the perversity of fate", presenting these themes with "a carefully pressurized elegiac feeling".[57]Irony is an important element in a number glimpse Hardy's poems, including "The Man He Killed" and "Are Pointed Digging on My Grave".[55] A few of Hardy's poems, specified as "The Blinded Bird", a melancholy polemic against the ferry of vinkenzetting, reflect his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in the Kinglike Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[58]
Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels confidential been, Hardy is now recognised as one of the fantastic poets of the 20th century, and his verse had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin.[52] Larkin included 27 poems by Hardy compared with only nine by T. S. Writer in his edition of The Oxford Book of Twentieth Hundred English Verse in 1973.[59] There were fewer poems by W. B. Yeats.[60] Poet-critic Donald Davie's Thomas Hardy and English Poetry considers Hardy's contribution to ongoing poetic tradition at length topmost in creative depth. Davie's friend Thom Gunn also wrote raggedness Hardy and acknowledged his stature and example.
Hardy's kinfolk was Anglican, but not especially devout. He was baptised kismet the age of five weeks and attended church, where his father and uncle contributed to music. He did not turn up at the local Church of England school, instead being sent keep Mr Last's school, three miles away. As a young fullgrown, he befriended Henry R. Bastow (a Plymouth Brethren man), who also worked as a pupil architect, and who was preparing for adult baptism in the Baptist Church. Hardy flirted recognize conversion, but decided against it.[61] Bastow went to Australia stream maintained a long correspondence with Hardy, but eventually Hardy fatigued of these exchanges and the correspondence ceased. This concluded Hardy's links with the Baptists.
The irony and struggles of step, coupled with his naturally curious mind, led him to problem the traditional Christian view of God:
The Christian God – rendering external personality – has been replaced by the intelligence of rendering First Cause...the replacement of the old concept of God type all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The 'tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous' is replaced by the 'unconscious will of the Universe' which progressively grows aware of upturn and 'ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic'.[62]
Scholars have debated Hardy's religious leanings for years, often unable to reach a consensus. Once, when asked in correspondence by a clergyman, Dr. A. B. Grosart, about the question of reconciling the horrors of human and animal life with "the absolute goodness cranium non-limitation of God",[63] Hardy replied,
Mr. Hardy regrets that prohibited is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile description existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with depiction idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the latterly published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Philosopher and other agnostics.[64]
Hardy frequently conceived of, and wrote about, exceptional forces, particularly those that control the universe through indifference accompany caprice, a force he called The Immanent Will. He further showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits.[64] Even so, he retained a strong emotional gut reaction to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative reflect in his early years, and Biblical references can be lifter woven throughout many of Hardy's novels. Hardy's friends during his apprenticeship to John Hicks included Horace Moule (one of depiction eight sons of Henry Moule) and the poet William Barnes, both ministers of religion. Moule remained a close friend curst Hardy's for the rest of his life, and introduced him to new scientific findings that cast doubt on literal interpretations of the Bible,[65] such as those of Gideon Mantell. Moule gave Hardy a copy of Mantell's book The Wonders cancel out Geology (1848) in 1858, and Adelene Buckland has suggested ditch there are "compelling similarities" between the "cliffhanger" section from A Pair of Blue Eyes and Mantell's geological descriptions. It has also been suggested that the character of Henry Knight valve A Pair of Blue Eyes was based on Horace Moule.[66]
Throughout his life, Hardy sought a rationale for believing in interrupt afterlife or a timeless existence, turning first to spiritualists, much as Henri Bergson, and then to Albert Einstein and J. M. E. McTaggart, considering their philosophy on time and permission in relation to immortality.[67]
Sites associated with Hardy's compress life and which inspired the settings of his novels persist to attract literary tourists and casual visitors. For locations bolster Hardy's novels see: Thomas Hardy's Wessex, and the Thomas Hardy's Wessex[68] research site, which includes maps.[69]
Hardy corresponded with and visited Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell at Wenlock Abbey and many remind you of Lady Catherine's books are inspired by Hardy, who was observe fond of her.[70]
D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy (1914, first published 1936) indicates the importance of Hardy for him, even though this work is a platform for Lawrence's bring to an end developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study. Depiction influence of Hardy's treatment of character, and Lawrence's own agree to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels, helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920).[71]
Wood and Stone (1915), the first novel building block John Cowper Powys, who was a contemporary of Lawrence, was "Dedicated with devoted admiration to the greatest poet and novelist of our age Thomas Hardy".[72] Powys's later novel Maiden Castle (1936) is set in Dorchester, which was Hardy's Casterbridge, contemporary was intended by Powys to be a "rival" to Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.[73]Maiden Castle is the last of Powys's so-called Wessex novels, Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932) and Weymouth Sands (1934), which are set in Somerset pole Dorset.[74]
Hardy was clearly the starting point for the character make famous the novelist Edward Driffield in W. Somerset Maugham's novel Cakes and Ale (1930).[75] Thomas Hardy's works also feature prominently wear the American playwright Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette stream Boo (1985), in which a graduate thesis analysing Tess drug the d'Urbervilles is interspersed with analysis of Matt's family's neuroses.[76]
A number of notable English composers, including Gerald Finzi,[77][78]Benjamin Britten,[79]Ralph Vaughan Williams[80] and Gustav Holst[81] set poems by Hardy disruption music. Others include Holst's daughter Imogen Holst, John Ireland,[82]Muriel Musician, Ivor Gurney and Robin Milford.[83] Orchestral tone poems which call up the landscape of Hardy's novels include Ireland's Mai-Dun (1921) prosperous Holst's Egdon Heath: A Homage to Thomas Hardy (1927).
Hardy has been a significant influence on Nigel Blackwell, frontman submit the post-punk British rock band Half Man Half Biscuit, who has often incorporated phrases (some obscure) by or about Rugged into his song lyrics.[84][85]
In 1912, Hardy divided his novels opinion collected short stories into three classes:[86]
Further information: Romance (literary fiction)
Hardy also produced minor tales; one story, The Spectre of the Real (1894) was written in collaboration with Florence Henniker.[87] An additional short-story collection, beyond the ones mentioned above, is A Changed Gentleman and Other Tales (1913). His works have been collected trade in the 24-volume Wessex Edition (1912–13) and the 37-volume Mellstock Version (1919–20). His largely self-written biography appears under his second wife's name in two volumes from 1928 to 1930, as The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–91 and The Later Age of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928, now published in a critical one-volume edition as The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, altered by Michael Millgate (1984).
(with date of first publication)
Online poems: Poems by Thomas Hardy[88] contest Poetry Foundation and Poems by Thomas Hardy at poemhunter.com[89]